On August 16, 2025 at 19:09 nanog@lists.nanog.org (John R. Levine via NANOG) wrote:
On Sat, 16 Aug 2025, bzs@theworld.com wrote:
"Electronic postage stamps" are one possible approach and might become the general term for whatever resource management is adopted.
But as a phrase it's too limiting and evokes certain counter-arguments as people stand up straw men and knock them down just based on those three words.
I don't understand, I say "electronic postage stamps" are probably not the right approach tho whatever happens someone might call it that and you want to argue that...electronic postage stamps are probably not the right approach? I just said that. All I've said thus far is that spammers' business models seem fragile and brittle and to rely on sending around a billion messages per day per each and perhaps it would be better to disrupt that business model than to engineer yet another filtering / validation technology. I haven't proposed a specific solution even if you keep wanting to read that into my words. At this point all I'm proposing is a paradigm shift, that we need to think differently about the problem.
It's a great idea if you wave away all of the practical questions like who's going to issue the postage, who's going to collect it, who's going to pay for the infrastructure to do the checking, and who's going to settle the claims when a crook breaks into your ISP and sends $10,000 worth of spam using your stamps.
My preferred solution is a mandatory button in each e-mail message that administers a small electric shock to the sender. Each individual shock would be no big deal but when thousands of people hit the button the cumulative effect would be painful or for big time spammers, fatal. It's sort of like the old Bonded Sender idea but with electricity. I have no idea how to implement that either, but people who claim it can't work are just opposed to creative, innovative ideas.
R's, John _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/D55VUHKF...
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